


trust is a double-edged sword

by growlery writes (growlery)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merlin (TV) Fusion, Gen, canon-typical anachronisms, team: fuck destiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23707096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery%20writes
Summary: Nolan finds out about the magic thing pretty much immediately. In Travis’s defence, he never expected he'd be made Nolan's manservant. That had been nowhere on his admittedly vague Move To Camelot To Stay With Cousin Bo While The Whole Business With Travis Accidentally Cursing The Village Sheep To Glow In The Dark Blows Over plan."You're going to get yourself killed," Lawson had said, a little hysterically, as he helped Travis hastily pack a bag before the village elders realised where to come looking."I'm dead if I stay here," Travis had said. "May as well find some new scenery first, eh?"
Comments: 15
Kudos: 86





	trust is a double-edged sword

**Author's Note:**

> this is ridiculous and i'm a little sorry. title is a quote from the show

Nolan finds out about the magic thing pretty much immediately. In Travis’s defence, he never expected he'd be made Nolan's manservant. That had been nowhere on his admittedly vague Move To Camelot To Stay With Cousin Bo While The Whole Business With Travis Accidentally Cursing The Village Sheep To Glow In The Dark Blows Over plan. 

"You're going to get yourself killed," Lawson had said, a little hysterically, as he helped Travis hastily pack a bag before the village elders realised where to come looking. 

"I'm dead if I stay here," Travis had said. "May as well find some new scenery first, eh?"

Lawson had hugged him, hard, and said if Travis died before he could come to Lawson's wedding, Lawson would have him brought back to life so he could kill him again himself. 

"I don't know if that’s actually possible? I mean. Huh. Maybe if you-" and Lawson had made a noise of pure frustration and crushed Travis to his chest again. 

Travis was planning on laying low, is the point. Even if he hadn't been, Bo had made it very clear to him that that was the only way he was going to survive. 

"You gotta lay low," Bo had said. "That's the only way you're going to survive."

It was inevitable that he was going to get in a fight, but in his defence, he saw a guy being a bonehead, he yelled at the guy that he was a bonehead. How was he supposed to know the guy was a prince? _The_ Prince Nolan, in fact, who even Travis in his tiny village out in the sticks had heard stories about. Courageous in battle, people said. Incredibly handsome, people said. An absolute dick with no sense of humour who would put Travis in the stocks for mouthing off at him a little, none of them said. 

"You mouthed off at him quite a lot," said Sir Ivan, who had been tasked with getting Travis into the stocks. He seemed almost apologetic about it, and he was much more handsome than Nolan, Travis thought, but unfortunately he had a sense of duty, or whatever, because he didn't budge when Travis tried to bat his eyelashes at him. He did laugh and wink back at him like he wasn’t on principle _opposed_ to Travis batting his eyelashes at him, so Travis will take it. 

The stocks sucked. People mostly threw vegetables at him, and vegetables are gross. But then someone started throwing apples, and he managed to catch one of them in his teeth, which drew a laugh out of one of the onlookers. 

His name was Wayne, and he was the blacksmith, and before Travis could try and sweet talk him into putting those sweet blacksmith moves to work and getting him out of his chains, he laughed and shook his head. 

"I'm not looking to end up beside you," he said, but he stayed with Travis til Sir Ivan came back to let him out, letting Travis ramble at him about anything and everything _except _the magic thing, Travis isn't a total idiot, and Travis is pretty sure they're friends now. 

Anyway, then there'd been a whole thing with a dragon under the castle who said a bunch of cryptic shit about destiny, and Prince Nolan, and Prince Nolan's adopted brother Kevin, and Prince Nolan's destiny, and Prince Nolan's adopted brother Kevin's destiny. Travis just nodded and went, "Yeah no for sure," and decided he was never coming down here again. 

And then there'd been _another_ thing with some mage who had disguised himself as a travelling bard but actually wanted to murder the shit out of Nolan, which Travis really couldn't blame him for, honestly, so he really has no idea how he ended up saving Nolan's life. 

But that's how he became Nolan's manservant, which made Travis regret saving his life even _more_, and that's how Travis came to be trying to complete everything on Nolan's ridiculous list of chores and using just the tiniest bit of magic to hurry things along at just the exact moment that Nolan came to check on him. 

"Um," Nolan says, finally. He picks up his breeches, which had been folding themselves until Travis freaked out at the sight of Nolan and they dropped to the ground. 

"Yeah," Travis says, because he has to say something, the silence is killing him. No, the _king _will be killing him, and Lawson's going to search all of Albion to find someone to bring Travis back from the dead so he can kill Travis again for fucking up on his literal third day in Camelot. 

But then Nolan sighs and he says, "Thank fuck, Kevin's been having these freaky prophetic dreams and we have no fucking clue what to do."

Travis blinks. "That's not really the kind of magic that I, uh. Do." Nolan narrows his eyes, and Travis quickly backpedals. "But it's all the same, totally, all magic, I am very magical, I can definitely help you out with that whole thing, for sure, we can fix that right up, please don't have me executed."

"I'm not going to have you executed," Nolan says, like this isn't a totally valid thing for Travis to be worried about right now. "You can really help with the dreams?"

"I mean, I don't know," Travis says honestly. "I can try. I'll try."

"Okay," Nolan says, and the beginnings of a smile start to bloom on his face, and Travis takes back what he thought before. Ivan isn't more handsome than Nolan. Travis doesn’t think anyone’s more handsome than Nolan. 

Kevin is big, and loud, and looks at Travis suspiciously when Nolan introduces him. 

“_That _Travis?” he says incredulously, and Nolan flushes. 

“Yeah,” he mutters, and Kevin looks over him critically. “He’s magical.”

“Oh, Patty, I don’t need to know about-”

“He does magic,” Nolan says loudly, over whatever Kevin was going to say he didn’t need to know about. “He’s a sorcerer.”

Travis holds his hand up, a little _hey, yes, I am still here, please remember that I too am a person, your highnesses_. “We prefer the term mage, actually, it’s gender-neutral, plus sorcery has shitty connotations these days because of your dickhead of a father- uh I mean. Oops.”

Kevin snort-laughs and smacks Travis on the shoulder. “You’re not wrong, kid.”

Travis smacks him back, hard, to complete the bonding ritual, and Kevin beams down at him. He’s not _that _much taller than Travis, but he still manages to carry off the loom. Travis will allow it. There are more important things right now, like-

“He’s gonna help with the dreams,” Nolan says, and all of the humour leaves Kevin at once. 

“Sure,” Kevin says, and Travis was going to protest that he only said he would _try_, he’s offering no guarantees here, but it’s so unnatural seeing Kevin like this, even knowing him for barely ten minutes, that he finds himself nodding. 

“Yeah bud,” he says, way too earnest. And then, “Uh, what’s wrong with the dreams? Other than the fact that they could get you executed for treason. Not that getting executed for treason isn’t a wrong enough thing. Uh.” In lieu of anything else, he finishes, with jazz hands, “Prophecy?”

Nolan glances quickly at Kevin. “They haven’t all come true,” he says, “but a lot of them have. And they’re not. They’re not all bad.”

Kevin snorts. It doesn’t sound like a laugh this time. “The bad ones are pretty bad, bro,” he says, and he sounds almost gentle, as gentle as a huge loud giant like him can sound, anyway. 

Nolan doesn’t say anything. His jaw is tight, and his eyes are all murdery-cold like when Travis first met him, and he’s staring a hole in the wall the way he did just after Travis saved him and he realised how close he’d been to dying. 

“So,” Travis says. He has no fucking clue what he’s doing here. He’s not even a _good _mage, he is barely above entry-level at best, it’s not like there were ever any people around that he could learn from. “So you want them to stop, or.”

“Yes,” Nolan says immediately, and Kevin says, “Not exactly,” and the two of them stare at each other. Travis _really _has no clue what he’s doing. 

“Okay,” he says, “okay, you guys clearly have some things you need to-”

“I keep dreaming about killing Nolan,” Kevin interrupts, and, oh, shit. Travis never did go back under the castle, and he forgot most of the dragon’s long twisty monologue basically immediately, but that comes back to him like a slap in the face: Kevin’s supposed to kill Nolan, and Travis is supposed to stop him. 

“Okay, no,” Travis says. He’s honestly still working it through in his brain but, honestly, _fuck _that. Fuck destiny. “That’s not going to happen.”

Kevin’s eyes go wide. Nolan blinks. 

“You love Nolan, right?” Travis says to Kevin, and Nolan suddenly looks like he’s about to die on the spot, and Kevin kind of deflates and says, “Of fucking course I do.”

“So you’re not going to turn evil and kill him so you can be king,” Travis says, and Nolan blinks twice this time. 

“How did you know about-”

“No,” Kevin says fervently. “Fucking- I’d die first, right here, right now. But the dreams- you don’t understand how real they are.”

“Kev,” Nolan says, softly, and Travis is momentarily a little stunned by a soft Nolan Patrick, slumped in the shoulders with this, fuck, this absolutely devastated look on his face. He thinks Kevin might be, too, because he just stares back at Nolan for a second, before shaking his head hard and turning to Travis. 

“You have to stop me,” Kevin tells him. “Whatever it takes.”

That fucking dragon. Travis wonders if Kevin’s dreamt about him, if his magic has shown him Travis murdering Kevin in cold blood. 

Fuck destiny for real. 

“Get out of here with that grim self-sacrificing bullshit,” Travis says. “We are not letting this happen, okay? You are not going to kill Nolan, and I’m not doing _shit _to you, and you are not going to kill Nolan. Got it?”

“Got it,” Kevin says, after a second, a second he spends looking kind of shell-shocked, his eyes a little wet. 

“Good,” Travis says, determined. He looks over at Nolan to make sure he is also on board with this plan. There’s this look on Nolan’s face, raw and- and something else, but it’s gone as soon as Travis meets his eyes. 

So Nolan knows about the magic thing, and it’s _fine_. 

**Author's Note:**

> extremely loose recasting:  
travis = merlin  
nolan = arthur  
kevin = morgana  
carter = gwen  
wayne = elyan  
provy = leon  
beezer = mordred  
bo horvat = gaius  
nico hischier = a princess of the week (prob elena she was my fav)  
jimmy vesey = morgause  
mat barzal = gwaine  
brock boesser = lancelot  
freddie andersen = percival
> 
> can you tell that i'm still bitter about a show that ended 8 years ago lmao

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] trust is a double-edged sword](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529385) by [LittleRedRobinHood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedRobinHood/pseuds/LittleRedRobinHood)
  * [[Podfic] trust is a double-edged sword](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29226150) by [ofjustimagine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofjustimagine/pseuds/ofjustimagine)


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